Brotherhood Promoter Resigns from DHS to Focus on GOP Party

Mohamed Elibiary announced that he has left his position as a senior advisor with the Department of Homeland Security. Elibiary, a stalwart supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood, said he was leaving so he can focus on “reforming” the conservative movement ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

Elibiary is a long-time Texas Republican Party official and was a delegate for Senator John McCain in 2008. He continues to identify himself as a conservative Republican and argues that he can help the party’s electoral prospects by moving its foreign policy in a pro-Islamist direction.

Elibiary is known for his almost daily advocacy for the Muslim Brotherhood on Twitter. He admits being intimately involved with the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood, which he describes as a “social network.”

“People like me know of the brotherhood group in a much more personal manner than the Average White Guy, who has no more insight than what’s available in the media,” he wrote.

On September 5, he tweeted that the Muslim Brotherhood is “intellectually undermining” the Islamic State terrorist group (formerly known as ISIS, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) and that the Brotherhood has been vital to counter-radicalization for over 40 years. He stated that if the Brotherhood did not exist, the world would “rush to create it.”

The Clarion Project contacted Elibiary asking for further explanation of how he hopes to “reform” conservative politics. He said he would not reply and accused the author of being part of “Islamophobia, Inc.”

Elibiary’s Beginnings

Over the last year, the author communicated with Elibiary extensively and published a 37 page annotated interview with him. Among the takeaways are that Elibiary was 16 years old when he first befriended the CEO of the Holy Land Foundation, Shukri Abu Baker.

Baker taught Elibiary about the alleged persecution of Palestinians by Israel and Elibiary began donating monthly to the Foundation until it was shut down by the U.S. government in 2001.

The two remained so close that they met the day before Baker was found guilty of financing Hamas. The Justice Department confirmed that the Foundation was a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood front. Elibiary blasted the prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation and accused the U.S. government of “using the law to force compliance with unjust foreign policies.”

Evidence introduced into the trial included FBI wiretaps of a secret 1993 U.S. Muslim Brotherhood meeting in Philadelphia where Baker repeatedly emphasized that deception is permissible and must be utilized.

One of the attending Hamas operatives, Abdel Haleem al-Ashqar, said, “Forming the public opinion or coming up with a policy to influence…the way the Americans deal with the Islamists, for instance. I believe that should be the goals of this stage.”

One of the decisions made toward that objective at that 1993 meeting was to create the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which the Justice Department designated an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial. The U.S. government listed CAIR as an entity of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood, specifically its Palestine Committee.

Elibiary was a CAIR official. He was on the board of CAIR’s Dallas-Fort Worth chapter in 2003. The founder of CAIR’s Texas branch, Ghassan Elashi, was convicted of financing Hamas in the Holy Land trial. Elibiary did not reply to questions about his relationship with Elashi.

In 2004, Elibiary spoke at an event honoring Ayatollah Khomeini, founder of the current Iranian regime. He says he did not know that was the purpose of the meeting. In 2007, he spoke at a joint conference of two Islamist groups, the North American Imams Federation and the very radical Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America.

Elibiary has said on Twitter that he met with the relatives of Hamas leaders and that he performed his hajj in 2011 as a guest of the Saudi King.

Elibiary has certainly advanced the stated objective of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood’s 1993 meeting to influence policy in a pro-Islamist direction.

Helping the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood Network

On the domestic front, Elibiary sat on a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) committee responsible for reviewing counter-terrorism training guidelines.

As the Clarion Project analyzed in a shocking May 2013 report, the result was guidelines that would end any education about the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood, its ideology and non-violent Islamist tactics. The guidelines also recommended marginalizing Brotherhood adversaries, specifically Muslims “reformers.”

The language of the guidelines is very similar to Elibiary’s in my interview with him. For example, on the topic of Muslim reformers, he said:

“There are other Muslim advocates of reform who have instead publicly chosen to politically demonize, in conservative media outlets, mainstream Muslim community organizations as ‘Islamists.’ Labeling these or other Muslim community organizations as either ‘Muslim Brotherhood-associated’ or ‘Muslim Brotherhood-legacy’ in my opinion is counterproductive.”

In 2011, counter-terrorism journalist Patrick Poole reported that Elibiary tried to leak confidential documents from the Texas Department of Public Safety that allegedly show evidence of “Islamophobia” in the government. He was said to have his access to a DHS database revoked as a result.

Elibiary told me that Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano exonerated him, but Poole said that he and his source were never contacted by DHS. He asks, “How could they have done an investigation with only one side being heard?”

In my interview with him, Elibiary made two comments that may indicate he had a role in protecting the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood from prosecution and scrutiny.

He said, “I helped my community pick up the pieces and safeguards its nonprofit organizations, in order to protect its liberties, after the HLF’s [Holy Land Foundation’s] closure and eventual conviction.”

He said with confidence that the unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land trial would not be prosecuted. He stated, “As has been reported in multiple conservative media outlets over the past few years, the long-desired HLF 2.0 trial for the unindicted co-conspirators is no longer going to happen.”

Advocating for the Muslim Brotherhood Abroad

On foreign policy, Elibiary told me that the U.S. government “needs to deepen our strategic engagement” with the Muslim Brotherhood and compared it to Christian evangelicals. He says it is non-violent, democratic and moderate.

He describes former Egyptian President Morsi as “Egypt’s Mandela” and asserts that the Brotherhood would still win a free and fair election in Egypt, even though Morsi’s overthrow was popularly supported. He also criticized the Egyptian government for its treatment of Sheikh Yousef al-Qaradawi, the Hamas-linked spiritual leader of the Brotherhood.

When the Christian Copts opposed the Brotherhood and complained of persecution, Elibiary slammed the Copts as “extremely unwise and immoral.” He accused American Coptic leaders of being “extremist,” “promoting Islamophobia” and having “nurtured anti-Islam and anti-Muslim sentiments.”

Elibiary compares the “drive by media slander of Islamism” to segregation and argues that the U.S. should not oppose the implementation of sharia governance in Muslim countries.

“We must always resist the temptation to force one group such as Islamists to reform by adopting ‘liberalism’ for example. That would be denying them their self-determination to structure their societies according to their public will,” he told me.

In June, Elibiary tweeted that it is “inevitable” that the Islamist objective of rebirthing a Caliphate would be fulfilled. He compared it to the European Union and claimed that both U.S. political parties are “headed in that direction” of endorsing it. Supporters of the Islamic State (ISIS) celebrated his message.

Conclusion

Elibiary has departed the DHS, but he has left behind a stunning example of how supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood and, in this case, even someone closely linked to a convicted Hamas financier, can get into sensitive positions and influence policy.

Elibiary has no intention of going away. He’s declared his intention to continue working in the homeland security enterprise and as a Republican Party activist.

Supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood — as well as all other Islamists — have no place in the U.S. government.

Ryan Mauro is ClarionProject.org’s national security analyst, a fellow with Clarion Project and an adjunct professor of homeland security. Mauro is frequently interviewed on Fox News.

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The Clarion Project (formerly Clarion Fund) is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization dedicated to educating both policy makers and the public about the growing phenomenon of Islamic extremism. The Clarion Project is committed to working towards safeguarding human rights for all peoples.